Saskatchewan United Party leader happy with byelection results

Although the Saskatchewan United Party (SUP) isn’t even a year old, it feels it has a lot to celebrate after making its election debut last week.

SUP candidate Jon Hromek finished second in the Lumsden-Morse byelection on Thursday with 22.7 per cent of the vote. The Saskatchewan Party’s Blaine McLeod won with 53.7 per cent of the votes cast, with the NDP’s Kaitlyn Stadnyk third at 21.6 per cent.

SUP Leader Nadine Wilson was very excited about the results. Although the voter turnout was low at 37.11 per cent of registered voters casting a ballot, Wilson is still happy with the numbers the party saw.

“Every election is determined by the people who show up and I think our team did very well on our first time out the gate. This was our first election and I’m very pleased with our campaign and the amount of people we got out,” said Wilson.

On the doorstep, she heard three common issues: Education, health care and taxation.

“These are the issues that the government should be listening to,” Wilson said of the Saskatchewan Party, which she used to represent. “I’m hopeful the government will take this to heart and listen to the people of the province.”

She thinks her party was able to pull some votes from the Sask. Party because of its stance on education.

“People are telling us they would like more parental involvement in the curriculum and what is occurring at the schools. That really resonated with our party as well as the folks on the doorstep. This was something we would like to address,” she said.

She was hoping to address issues like that with Hromek as an MLA by her side.

“He would be an amazing MLA. He’s very courageous and passionate in his convictions. Jon will continue to work in Lumsden and I’ll go back to work and ask some pertinent questions of the government regarding education,” she said.

The SUP ran just one candidate in the byelections, opting not to have candidates in the Regina Walsh Acres and Regina Coronation Park ridings. Wilson said it’s because it’s still a new party and needs to be strategic.

“This is a rural riding that just resonated with our values and morals. We thought we could work with the folks in Lumsden-Morse and I believe we achieved what we set out to do,” she said.

The numbers she is so proud of wouldn’t have been possible without the campaign team.

“Our little campaign team was just amazing. You always need volunteers and we put the call out. We found some incredible people who have the passions to bring back Saskatchewan to what we believe it should be,” said Wilson.

She said the SUP will continue to build its party.

“I believe our campaign was able to get people to express what they thought was very important to them and the issues they would like us to tackle with them. And we’re quite willing to do that,” Wilson said.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick